KRYGIER, RIVON

KRYGIER, RIVON (1957– ), French rabbi. Born in Brussels, Krygier was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir youth movement until his aliyah to Jerusalem in 1977. There he was a student at the Hebrew University and at the Ma'ayanot Institute of Jewish Studies led by the nonconformist French rabbi Leon Askenazi. Krygier was the first French-speaking rabbi to graduate from the Schechter Institute, the Jerusalem branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1991 he became the rabbi of the first masorti (Conservative) congregation in France, the Adath Shalom synagogue in Paris. With a doctorate from the Sorbonne in religious sciences, he became an important figure in Jewish intellectual debate in France through his lectures and writings, notably in La loi juive à l'aube du XXIème siècle (preface by Charles Mopsik, 1995), a collection of responsa published in Hebrew by Conservative rabbis on issues of modern life and translated into French for the first time; À la limite de Dieu: l'énigme de l'omnniscience divine et du libre-arbitre humain dans la pensée juive (his doctoral thesis,   1998); Epitre de l'amour (an adaptation of Rabbi Eliot Dorff 's study of human sexuality as perceived in Jewish sources, 2000), Epitre de la vie (an adaptation of Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg's study of Jewish attitudes towards mourning). (Philippe Boukara (2nd ed.)